A/N: To clear things up a bit: yes, I am starting every single chapter with a flashback, and will do so until the epilogue. The flashbacks serve to put Henry in the actual context of their son and Rick and Kate in the context of his parents, and not have the story just be Henry a victim and Rick and Kate the two people sent to rescue him, with them being his parents just hollow titles given to them in a dialogue. They serve to help flesh out who Henry is as their son and who Rick and Kate are as parents, and let you read all characters of this story as members of a family.
I like writing the flashbacks, writing scenes of what I see Rick and Kate's life being like as parents, and so on. But I didn't see much of a plot in just making them a standalone story, so I decided to incorporate them into this story. So, no, they aren't pointless.
Rick smiled softly as his fingers clicked away at his laptop. It was Henry's third birthday in a few days. Kate was keeping her plans as close to her chest as possible and won't even tell him, her own husband. And he has no boundaries when it comes to snooping for secrets being kept from him, their past has shown him better. But this time, his snooping is of no avail. Henry was just put down for a nap a little over forty-five minutes after lunch and was fast asleep on the couch in the living room last he checked. But after another few minutes, he looked up over his laptop and saw Henry walk in, rubbing one eye with his fist. "Hey, little man." The father said.
"Hi, Daddy." Henry said groggily and moved around Rick's desk to his side.
Rick pushed out from under his desk and reached down, picking his son up with a feigned groan and putting him on his lap. "You have a good nap?" He asked just as Henry let out an adorable yawn.
"Yeah." Henry said.
Rick smiled and reached forward, closing his laptop before leaning back in his chair. "You have a birthday coming up, little man. You excited?"
"Yes." Henry answered, a happy smile shining quickly across his face.
"Yeah? How old you gonna be?" He asked, moving his head back and lidding his gaze, giving his son a funny face. Henry showed his dad three fingers proudly. "That old, huh?" Rick said and moved his hand over his son's hair, ruffling it up a bit. He has his mother's thick hair, but he can tell that it's starting to get his distinct suaveness by the way it was slightly starting to wave in the front. "Your mom has some pretty big plans for you, little man. You must be getting lots of presents."
"Yeah, I hope it's a dragon." Henry says in his almost three-year-old tone.
"A dragon?" Rick asks.
"Yeah, I wanna dragon 'cause I wanna be a dragon when I grow up."
"Really?" He asked, sounding impressed. "Well, can I tell you something, little man?"
"What, Daddy?"
"Well," Rick started and readjusted Henry on his lap, pulling him closer. "Your mommy's a dragon slayer."
Henry's eyes whipped wide around to his dad, "Mommy fights dragons?"
"Yep. Your mommy even beat a dragon one time." Rick said, hugging his son to him.
"Really? What happened, Daddy?"
"Well, Henry," Rick started on a sigh and felt his eyes start to stare off, his mind quickly drifting into memory. "The dragon stole something Mommy loved very much. Something special to her. As special as you are to us. Only we couldn't get it back. So... Mommy fought the dragon, because your mom's very brave. She didn't want the evil dragon stealing anything else from anyone. So, she tracked the dragon down to its lair and she won."
"Mommy won against the dragon?" Henry asks, completely entranced.
"Mmhmm. It was a long and tough battle, but in the end, she won. She defeated the dragon and lived happily ever after." It's then that Rick's eyes focused back and looked down to his son, then felt a smile pull at his lips a second after. "Then we got you, little man."
"I wanna be a dragon sayer when I grow up!" Henry exclaimed, puffing out his chest.
"You wanna be a dragon slayer too?" Rick asked, raising his brow. Henry nodded proudly and put his fists on his side, posing like a superhero on his father's lap. "Well, how about we go pay mommy a visit at work and watch her slay some more dragons, huh?"
"Let's... go!" Henry said, jumping off his dad's lap and pointing forward, still posing.
Rick ruffled his son's hair and stood up. "Let's go bug mommy, then."
It's a long, frantic drive out of the city to a rural area with high, untamed grass that's stained with yellow and tan with the changing of the seasons of mid-September, with thick, stout trees plotted here and there, popping out of the fields that line the small highway that looks mostly untravelled besides by the locals. Rick and Kate spend the time in the back seat of a nondescript FBI SUV, wringing each other's hands together with fear.
Val, the petite blonde who doubles as the FBI's media liaison with a background as a profiler, pulls to a stop once the local sheriff's patrol cars blinking lights come into view along the long stretch of highway. One of the deputies is already motioning them to pull off to the side of the road before going back to direct what little traffic there is on the highway. Rick and Kate are whipping off their seatbelts and jumping out of the SUV once it's being put into park.
Kate's legs feel so untrustworthy, her blood screaming in her veins, but at the same time, cold and frozen. Her heart is a wrecking ball in her throat, quaking and shuttering as it has been ever since she got the news that a body had been found. Her mind won't sit still, images and pictures flashing in her mind like a strobe light so fast it's like she's not thinking at all. She steadies herself on the hood of the SUV as she staggers around the front to meet her husband.
Who's in no better shape than she is.
He would feel weak and pitiful that he can feel tears in his vision if he wasn't so all-consumed by the heart-tearing fear. But as Kate comes around the front of the car and puts a hand on the sleeve of his flannel shirt and grabs it by the fist as if to keep herself upright, he puts a hand on her back and steps toward the grass, where they can see two sheriff's deputies waiting a ways into the field with their hats tipped downward against the early morning sun shining in their direction. They can't see anything through the almost thigh-high grass, but they both are almost ready to shut down.
They both are ready to start forward until they see Sorenson step in front of them. "Wait here. Val?" Sorenson says and waves the blonde over. The two agents maneuver through the grass as Rick and Kate stand, waiting near the edge of the field.
Kate feels her heart jump higher in her throat as her body quakes with a silent, protesting sob, her stomach pulling in on itself. She quickly reaches over and grabs her husband's hand and squeezes it with every ounce of strength she can summon, her eyes remaining glued on Sorenson as he moves the sides of his suit jacket back to put his hands on his hips as he looks down.
Rick pulls his wife into his side as his soul starts to tear itself out, watching as Sorenson kneels down. He can see clearly when Sorenson's eyes drift shut. Rick feels his wife shake next to him as Sorenson looks over in their direction and shouts. "It's not him."
In an instant, a flood of relief pours through her, draining every single ounce of tension out of her body as a relieved moan, chocked by emotions, pushes out of her throat and warm tears flow out of her eyes. She turns to Rick, who's looking like he just drained himself of every bit of tension, and she jumps forward, throwing her arms around his chest and burying her face into the warm crock of his neck. His arms quickly snake around her shoulders and hold her to him, rubbing her back as she sucks in emotionally stained breathes to begin steadying herself.
"It's not him. It's not Henry." He says into her ear.
She gives him one last squeeze before moving her arms out from around him and puts her hands on his chest, lifting her head off his shoulder. There's a small sting in the back of her mind, but right now, she's too overwhelmed by relief knowing that the body isn't that of her son. She sniffles and gives him a long nod. "It's not Henry."
Rick nods along with her, rubbing her arms. "He's still alive. He's still out there somewhere."
Then, that stinging sensation in the back of her mind takes over. "But if we don't find him, then..." She trails off, unable to continue as her eyes look back out toward Sorenson and Val, who are beginning their examination. "Rick, what if this just isn't the right... what if he's really-" She says in a broken voice.
"He's not, Kate." He says and tries to pull her in again, but she pushes him away.
"Don't tell me that, Rick." She says in a soft, emotionally tight voice. "Whoever that little boy is, whoever has Henry, that could be him right now. Whoever has my Henry will kill him if I don't find him, Rick."
"We are not going to let that happen, Kate." He tells her sternly, forcing her to look back up at him by putting a hand on her jaw and cupping her cheek. He feels so weak right now, but he knows that one of them has to be strong. "We don't even know if this has anything to do with Henry yet, and if it does... then it's our first real lead and we are going to get whoever took Henry."
"And what if we don't?"
"Will you stop thinking like that?" He demands, letting his hand fall back to his side. "We need to have hope that we will get our son back, Kate."
"Rick, I can't even cope with the thought of losing our little boy. How am I supposed to have hope right now?"
"Because it's all we can have right now."
With the worry only partly gone, Sorenson chances a glance over at Rick and Kate, seeing them converse between each other emotionally. He then looks over to Val and gives her a nod. "So, what can you tell me?"
"Well, I put him at around four, maybe five years of age. And judging by the location, it's clear that someone didn't think he'd be found." Val says, looking over the field, seeing the deputy directing traffic stop the few cars that are passing by questions, seeing if they saw anything suspicious. "But," She continues and looks back down to the body, "by the way his body was laid, whoever did this cared about him."
"Is that because of the sheet he's wrapped in?" Sorenson asks with a notepad in his hand.
"Wrapped in? No, he's bundled up." Val says, motioning over the sheet with her finger. "This boy wasn't just tossed in a sheet and thrown out of the back of a van. This boy was bundled up with care and rested here. And," Val continues, pulling back the sides of the sheet the boy is tightly bundled up in, "I see no obvious signs of trauma. No stabbing, no blood, no signs of a weapon being used, no signs of torture or obvious abuse. If this boy has been missing for long, whoever had him kept him healthy."
"Child trafficking, you think?"
"I wouldn't put money on that." Val says with a shake of her head. "If that were the case, I don't think we would have found the body. Who called it in by the way?"
"Oh," Sorenson says, pointing over toward one of the patrol cars, "A father and son. They were out here hiking, stumbled across the body and called it in."
"So, whoever put him here probably didn't expect him to be found."
"But they cared for him enough to bundle him up?"
"Sign of remorse?" Val asks, standing back up. "I'll have Ried run his image through our database, see if anyone's reported him missing, then see what we can get from an autopsy. Hopefully, this is connected to Henry's kidnapping."
"I'd imagine so." Sorenson says and moves along side her as they move back toward their SUV to make room for the CSU. "Whoever this boy is, he looks a lot like their son. Two boys, around the same age, nearly identical descriptions, one goes missing and the next day, another one is found dead? I'm skeptical, but that's too much of a coincidence for me."
It takes a little over another hour to make it back to the precinct, and by the time they do, it's nearly noon.
They were still waiting on the results from the autopsy, but they identified the missing child. Isaac Griffin, four-years-old, went missing from a convenience store in Long Island just over six weeks ago. The FBI had sent agents down to the parents home to give them the news. But once they arrived back in the precinct, Kate went into her office to pour over her copies of the case files surrounding the boys disappearance; eye-witness reports, statements from the parents, financial statements from the parents, employee records from the convenience store, security footage tapes on her computer, anything to keep her mind busy and focused on anything other than what's been haunting her for the past twenty-nine hours.
Rick went back into the breakroom to meet Martha and Alexis, who are on their way over now. But her father was knocking on her door just now, interrupting her train of thought. She looks up and waves him in. "Hi, Dad." She says with a very heavy smile and clicks her pen closed.
"I heard you found a body." Jim says in a low voice as he sits down in one of the chairs on the other side of her desk.
"Yeah, but it wasn't Henry. It was a four-year-old boy who went missing just over a month ago from Long Island." She says and goes back to trying to focus on her work.
"You think it's connected to whoever took Henry?"
"The FBI seems to think so, and right now, it's our best hope to find whoever kidnapped Henry... even if it doesn't lead anywhere."
Jim nods, watching intently as his daughter's eyes remain glued to her work. "You don't think that could happen to Henry, do you?"
Kate looks back up at her father with red eyes. "Dad, if this is connected to Henry, that means whoever has him doesn't have a problem killing an innocent child. And right now, that innocent child is my son. And for all I know, that could be him already, so..." She says, trailing off with a shake of her head as she looks back down to the papers on her desk, "I-I can't think about it right now."
Jim nods, thinking that she would have had more faith in her motherhood instincts than that. "Do you remember when you went missing at that age?"
Kate looks back up to him with a knitted brow. "What? What are you talking about, Dad?"
Jim gives her a hollow chuckle as he shakes his head. "You were just a little younger than Henry. Your mother and I had taken you to the park and we were there for about an hour. And... just like Henry, you hated it when we hovered, so... when you wandered off, we panicked. We searched up and down the park for about an hour before calling the police. And when we did, they said that you had wandered into a flower shop. I guess you'd gotten lost and remembered your mother taking you there and knew it was same. The lady running the place said she recognized you, but didn't know our names so she called the police. You had uh... you had a whole bunch of flowers in your hair when we came running in."
"I don't remember that." Kate says, trying to think.
Jim shakes his head, "Oh, you were only about three at the time. But the point is... the entire time you were missing, I was... I was frantic and thinking the worst. But... your mother... every time I'd try to say 'maybe this happened' or 'maybe that happened', she'd just shake her head and say 'No, she's alive. I can feel it. My daughter's alive somewhere and I know it.' I'd ask her how she could possibly know something like that, and all she'd tell me was... 'it's a mother's intuition.'"
"So..." She starts with a shaky voice, her eyes briefly glancing at the photo on her desk of her and Henry, "what you're saying... is..."
"Just listen to your heart, Katie."
Kate nods, looking up at the ceiling over her tears, letting out a tight breath and feeling... something. Something inside of her telling her... "Yes... he's alive." She says on a nod, looking over at her father's soft smile. "And I'm going to find him."